This is part of a discussion of Duane Elmer’s book “Cross Cultural Servanthood” which, while directed at a cross-cultural audience, has excellent principles that can be applied in all contexts. This is a review of chapter four. See also part one and part two.

Jesus’ outlandish habit of eating with “tax collectors and sinners” enraged Jewish religious leaders of his day. Why did such important men care so much about who Jesus ate with? By eating together, Jesus signaled his fellowship with and welcome of the scum of society. Religious teaching of the day disallowed welcoming and fellowshipping with one of them before they’d repented, changed, and become one of us.

Chapter four of Elmer’s book begins a focus on certain steps in the “pilgrimage” towards being a servant. Elmer uses the language of pilgrimage because it is indeed a journey to leave our ego-centric definitions of servanthood and begin to understand how those around us can best be served. The first step on the pilgrimage towards true, humble servanthood is openness. Elmer defines openness as “the ability to welcome people into your presence and make them feel safe”.

Human nature in general is set in an attitude of judgment and closure towards others. Studies show it takes us an average of 2.4 to 4.6 seconds to decide if there’s potential for a relationship with someone. Once we’ve categorized the person in front of us (and in that short amount of time, it can only be based on their appearance!), we close our minds about them and act towards them based on a decision taken in less than five seconds!

Jesus’ welcoming of sinners and outcasts into his presence continues in emphasis throughout the New Testament. Hospitality is listed among requirements for church leaders and mentioned by Paul, Peter, and John in their epistles. But while hospitality has come to mean in the West the welcoming of friends and family into your home – the word in Greek is rooted in the meaning “loving the stranger”. Hospitality is supposed to be practiced exactly opposite to what we as human beings find natural – it’s meant to welcome the one NOT like us.

Elmer quotes Miroslav Volf who writes, “The will to give ourselves to others and ‘welcome’ them, to readjust our identities to make space for them, is prior to any judgment about others, except that of identifying with them in their humanity.”

Every time we encounter another human being, Elmer writes, we have the opportunity to experience a “moment of grace, if we so choose – or a moment of profanity… We profane another person whenever we fail to honor them as human beings. Because every human being is made in the image of God, each is intrinsically connected to him and is therefore sacred, being stamped with God’s own imprint… Jesus’ identification with us is so intense that whatever touches us touches him. And whatever I do to another human, I do to him. By profaning another person, I profane God. Thus the greater profanity may not be cursing, bad as that is, but failing to extend openness and hospitality to another person who bears the Creator’s image.”

Especially in the church, we seem far too willing to label other human beings in a way that means we don’t have to welcome them with openness and hospitality. They’re of a different denomination or a different culture or from a different part of town. They’re liberal or homosexual or Muslim. Somehow their differentness is our excuse not to express openness towards them. What we’re not seeing is that biblical hospitality is meant especially for those who are other than us.

By stretching ourselves to mirror God’s radical openness as seen in Jesus, we take the first step on the pilgrimage towards divine servanthood.

Do you practice hospitality primarily to those who are like you? How do you react to the call to welcome specifically strangers and those different from you?

Today we continue a discussion of Duane Elmer’s book “Cross Cultural Servanthood” which, while directed at a cross-cultural audience, has excellent principles that can be applied in all contexts. This is a review of chapter three. Part one of the discussion can be found here.

Elmer begins chapter three with this illustration:

There’s a monkey who’s taken refuge on an island while a massive typhoon rages around him and flood waters rise. While waiting for the storm to pass, the monkey sees a fish who appears to be struggling while swimming against the current. The kind hearted monkey decides to help the fish who obviously needs assistance.

The monkey, at great risk to himself, climbs a dangling limb over the spot where the fish is swimming. Stretching precariously, the monkey rescues the fish from the raging waters and hurries back to his safe spot. He lays the fish carefully next to him on the dry, secure ground. “For a few moments,” Elmer writes, “the fish showed excitement, but soon settled into a peaceful rest. Joy and satisfaction swelled inside the monkey. He had successfully helped another creature.”

While the whole illustration is told from the monkey’s point of view, we’re never given a description of his emotional state. What degree of arrogance or humility did he harbor in his heart as he “helped” the fish? But, “the fish likely saw the arrogance of the monkey’s assumption that what was good for the monkeys would also be good for fish. This arrogance, hidden from the monkey’s consciousness, far overshadowed his kindness in trying to help the fish. Thus good intensions are not enough.”

In the fall of this year, I’ll begin an online Master’s degree program. Furthering my formal education has been something I’ve wanted to do since I graduated with my bachelor’s degree and I’m excited to finally be able to do it. But…

I once observed an interaction between two people – one of whom had over six years of experience living cross-culturally and the other who had barely three months. Yet the one with three months of experience was lecturing the one with more experience about how to translate a concept into the local language. I cringed. While both people had a Master’s degree – that further education had made one willing to listen, while it had made the other feel prepared to lecture on a topic he barely knew anything about.

Most people who engage in community service or enter ministry, do so from good intentions. Yet how often do we dive into creating a new program or new outreach without stopping to ask those for whom the program is intended how they’d best be served? How often do we jump straight to teaching without first asking what our students what they need to learn? Elmer quotes from the Lausanne Willowbank report that says, “We repent of the ignorance which assumes that we have all the answers and that our only role is to teach. We have very much to learn.”

Does it give you pause to consider how hidden arrogance might be harming the very people you intend to help? How does your church or community decide which new programs to implement? Is it a top-down decision made by “us” for “them”? Or is it a process informed heavily by the stated needs of those you desire to serve?

I’d never experienced a foot washing service until I attended Moody Bible Institute. Every year on Maundy Thursday, after a brief chapel homily, students who felt prompted could go down front where a line of campus leaders and professors were ready to wash their feet.

I never went. Partly because I was still too uncomfortable with a tradition not my own, mostly because I struggled with feeling unworthy to take part in the story. I agreed too much with Peter – it was unthinkable that Jesus should serve me. I was much more comfortable relating to Him as supreme commander than looking Him in the face as a stripped-down, foot-washing servant.

That discomfort with Jesus’ servant example is one many Western Christians share. We’d much rather prefer to reflect the nature of His Lordly, glorious return than His humble foot washing Incarnation. Christians too easily speak the language of [political, cultural, ecclesiastical, family] power and war. One mega-church pastor, quoting from Revelation 19, criticizes Christian appeals for pacifism by appealing to when Jesus “will come again not in humility but rather in glory… Simply, on his first trip to the earth Jesus took a beating to atone for sin; on his next trip he will hand them out to unrepentant sinners instead.”

Consciously or unconsciously we’ve neglected Jesus’ call that we will be blessed if we follow His servant-example. In fact, that example is the only one we’re called to conform to. In his book Cross-Cultural Servanthood, Duane Elmer writes, “The lordly model is not for his followers. Jesus alone rightly claims the title ‘Lord’ and shares it with no one. We are not to follow him in his lordly role but in his servant role.”

Human nature falls prey to the failure Jesus criticized the Pharisees for – delighting to lord over others any power or position in our grasp. It’s precisely because we expect God to wield His power in the flashy, oppressive way of humans that the image of Incarnate God bent over to serve so rattles us. It’s because we prefer to gain power for our benefit that we struggle with the call to follow him into servanthood.

I read Elmer’s book three months ago and it’s still rattling around in my brain. He’s writing in the context of working cross-culturally but the principles of servanthood are applicable wherever Christ-followers are. This is a God-thing, Elmer insists:

When God chose to connect with humans, he did so as a servant. It was a most unlikely way to connect, for servants are usually invisible… Why would Jesus choose to come as a servant? All the images of servant seem so counter-human.I can think of only one reason Jesus came as a servant: it is in the very nature of God to serve.

This image of God’s nature oriented towards servanthood is one that I still can’t wrap my mind around. The whole book has challenged the way I think and operate around others.

Over the next several weeks, I’d like to take his book chapter by chapter and look at the principles of servanthood he lays out. Please, please join in the discussion. Perhaps together we might grow in our ability to be servants. Which, if Elmer’s right, means growing in our likeness of God the Servant.

Do you agree with Elmer that to serve is in God’s nature? What’s your gut reaction to being called not to follow Jesus in His Lordship, but in His Servantship?